


Holding On

by MintIceTea



Series: Rumbelle Tumblr Events [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Stargate Universe
Genre: Anyelle, F/M, Rumbelle Secret Santa 2015, Rushbelle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5470364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintIceTea/pseuds/MintIceTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rush doesn’t know where they are, how they got here, or why they are here. But when this beautiful woman holds his hand he’s not sure he cares anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [herstorybooks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/herstorybooks/gifts).



> My RSS '15 gift for belleandherstorybooks. The prompt was "rushbelle: never let me go". Now since I had only seen a few episodes of SGU (though I've had plenty of rushbelle fanfic to supplement that) I tried to not lean so heavily on canon. Which ended up with this little thing. It was fun though. :)

                Sometimes it felt like her memories were split straight down the middle. Memories of before and after. Before when she spent nights falling asleep listening to the gentle scratching of her mother writing. The hundreds of letters she sent in correspondence to members of her Scholars Guild. The sheer giddiness of opening one of those, of sharing thoughts and theories with those who understood.

                And then the darkness of her memories.

                The suffering screams of the dying.

                She remembered the aching pain of watching her mother close her eyes for the last time.

                Her indignant fury as her father sealed her fate forever.

                The other half was terrifying. Forever nothingness of being among the stars has a way of bring you to the edge of overwhelming madness and pushing you over. Leaving her to only think in flashes and vague dust trails.

                She was stardust, floating and waiting for gravity to catch her and bring her back to herself. For what the point of being able to touch the universe if she could not hold on to anything?

\---

                After a while she wasn’t sure when she was able to visualize more than the blackness of space. But occasionally finding herself in the marbled halls of her childhood home brought her thoughts back together. Bits of her life before came fluttering back, gradually and unpredictably, like butterflies. 

                Somehow though she managed to move about the palace. To function as if she was alive. No need to eat or drink. She tried to sleep but could never silence the swirling of her thoughts. They still acted as if she was one with the universe, forever moving, leaving her feeling lost.

                She was unaware of time passing. Occasionally she thought she had been there, alone, for thousands of years, other times she was sure it had been merely a week.

                But it did not matter. She was alone and nothing would change. The sun would continuously shine through the leaves outside. She would walk the halls and try to keep track of her hectic thoughts. Things wouldn’t change here.

                Belle would be stuck haunting this place, not dead, but also not quite alive. Most likely for eternity. Alone, except for the shadows and sunlight.

                And the ghost-like figure of a man that sometimes appeared at the corners of her vision.

\---

                Belle noticed she could think better when she talked to this ghost. So whenever the fleeting memories came to her brain she told him. He never responded, never looked her way. But she talked anyway. She told him of studying with peers. The long days of nothing but books, occasionally marking something useful, but never seeming to make progress.

                “What were you studying?” A voice besides her own startled a scream out of Belle. She stumbled over her own feet, and fell to the floor in a heap. She pressed a hand over her pounding heart.

                “Fuck – sorry.” Belle turned and was nearly nose to nose with her ghost. He didn’t flicker out of sight like he normally did, staring straight at her. Like he was really here.

                “You can hear me?” She whispered.

                “Yeah.” He was looking at her very seriously, as if studying her. “I’m surprised you can hear me. That had never happened before.”

                “My name is Belle,” she breathed, reaching out a shaking hand towards him. Afraid to actually touch him in case she didn’t make contact.

                “Nicholas Rush.” He grasped her hand in his, looking curiously at their hands as she gasped.

                “Oh, I can touch you!” She cradled his face in both hands. “I can touch you!”

                “I noticed,” he muttered, letting her stroke his stubbled cheeks. “Where are we?”

                “My home, or my memories of it? I’m not sure. I’ve been adrift and I don’t feel myself.” Her hands moved into his hair, tugging at it and giggling a little watery. “I’m not alone.”

                “How long have you been here?” He grabbed her wrists, pulling them away, but still holding on.

                “It feels like I’ve always been here. How are you here?”

                “I come here when I sleep. Ever since I started studying the Ancients.” He stood and pulled her up with him. He released her wrists and Belle fluttered her hands nervously, wanting to hang on to him. Wanting to feel anchored again. She was reaching out to touch him again, to embrace him, when he vanished.

                She screamed and felt herself scatter again.

\---

                Rush wasn’t accustomed to dreams. He had never been a deep sleeper, and most of his dreams would be simple recounts of what he had done through the day. Rethinking his calculations and translations. Nothing more, nothing remarkable.

                Until he started on the Icarus project. Then his dreams started taking a particular format. He’d find himself in a palace of some sort. Light streaming in through the windows, filtered by the trees outside. Something was strange about it, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was – it seemed like a place out of time.

                In the dreams there would be a ghostly woman wandering. Always talking. At first it was in a language he could not understand, at the edge of his brain, sounding familiar but not making sense. He spoke to her without gaining any reaction.

                Except for yesterday. He found himself unexpectedly in the palace, he wasn’t aware he had fallen asleep. He must have collapsed – it wouldn’t have been the first time he had worked himself into unconsciousness.

                But it was the first time that he could understand the words the woman, Belle, was saying. It was the first time she heard him.

                The first time she had touched him.

                Rush’s thoughts were full of her, of _Belle_ , over the next few days. Every time he went to sleep he found himself in her palace. Now instead of walking beside her, but never _with_ her as he would before in his dreams, now Belle greats him with a grateful smile, an embrace, a _welcome_.

                It worries him how much he likes it.

                He likes how Belle can’t seem to keep her hands off him. Always brushing her shoulder against his, stroking his face. She tells him she feels more herself when she’s touching him.

                Rush feels the same. It’s strange. Ever since Gloria passed the closest he has felt to feeling whole has been with Belle. Destiny comes close sometimes, but with Belle there is nothing in the background. No angry soldiers, no nicotine and caffeine withdrawal, no aches.

                No responsibilities.

                It frightens him when he awakes. How perfect that strange little world seems. Just him and Belle. And the more he gets to know her, the more they talk, the less he wants to leave when he awakes.

                She shows him around the palace. They can interact with the building in ways that he had never been able to before. He can pull the books and screen-like tablets from the shelves in the library. He can read and understand them. And more than once the knowledge he finds there helps him when he’s awake and working on Destiny.

                After a while he finds himself sleeping regularly.

\---

                “You’re marvelous,” Belle murmured. She rested her head on his shoulder, her fingers intertwining with his. A book sat open but ignored on his lap, his attention fully focused on the woman beside him. “I remember everything now. We were studying the illness that was spreading across the continent. I could never remember that before.”

                “I doubt that has anything to do with me.” Rush laughed a little, rubbing his thumb against hers.

                She swatted at him with her free hand. “It does! It feels like I’ve been asleep for so long, Nick.”

                “Mm.” He rested his head against hers, and tried to remember the last time he had felt so calm and relaxed. He drew a blank, for a moment not recalling anything beyond this world. It startled him so much that he sat up in his bed, scowling.

                Each and every time since then it felt like he was fading from one world into another. Less and less of him existed on Destiny, and more of him in Belle’s world.

                Rush expressed this feeling to her once, when his thoughts were still frantic and full from his day on the ship. She shook her head sadly.

                “I’m sorry, Nick. I don’t know. Selfishly, I’m so happy you’re here. I don’t want you to go.” She tucked herself against him, his arm around her waist as they sat on her favorite bench in the courtyard. The trees far above them formed a canopy that was nearly solid, only a few rivers of blue appearing between the leaves.

                “Why are you here, Belle?”

                “Because Papa didn’t want me to waste away and die. The sickness was so painful, and once he contracted it he wanted me to be safe.” She took a shuddering breath. “Some of the scientists in the capital were working on a way to separate the spirit and the mind from the physical body. It was in testing phases, but Papa was insistent. I think he was going mad.”

                “So he forced you to ascend?”

                “Is that what it is called now?”

                “Yeah. That technology has been lost for ages though.” Rush was starting to feel a little fuzzy. His mind was spinning.

                “Then how are you here?” Belle whispered, as if scared to know the answer.

\---

                Rush’s days got shorter and shorter. So much so that TJ was starting to keep an eye on him, and not too subtly. He heard Eli muttering that he was nearly narcoleptic, but it wasn’t like that. It was just harder to function now.

                Harder to exist now that he knew where he was going.

                At some level he was reaching the realm of ascension, and if it only contained Belle and him that was fine.

                Perfectly fine.

                He vaguely recognized that he was rationalizing it. Eli was capable of reading the ancient. They could function without him – or so they claimed, loudly and often.

                He wouldn’t be missed here, would he?

                It wouldn’t be so bad if he fell asleep, went to see her, and just didn’t…wake up?

                Would it?

\---

                 It seemed like they had been laying in the grass for days. Softly talking about fleeting thoughts, lightly dozing, laying quietly.

                “Are you alright, Nick?” Belle finally asked, her lips brushing against his neck as she spoke.

                “Hmm?”

                “Are you…staying?”

                “I think so.” He admitted after a moment. He felt calm. Far calmer than he had ever been on the ship, or on earth. This time felt different and he was surprised to find how… _right_ it felt.

                “Forever?” Belle breathed, and he could feel her hope in her question. And with his answer he felt the peaceful calm cement in his soul.

                “As long as you are holding on to me.”

              


End file.
